ground and calling, "Biddy, biddy,
biddy--chicky, chicky, chicky"--hearing which, a whole flock of poultry
was around her in a minute; and, stooping down, she secured one of the
fattest, which, an hour afterward, was broiled for supper.

"Dear me, how easily you get along!" said Mrs. Troost.

And it was some time before she could compose herself sufficiently to
take up the thread of her story. At length, however, she began with--

"Well, as I was saying, nobody thought William McMicken would marry
Sally May. Poor man! they say he is not like himself any more. He may
get a dozen wives, but he'll never get another Sally. A good wife she
made him, for all she was such a wild girl.

"The old man May was opposed to the marriage, and threatened to turn
Sally, his own daughter, out of house and home; but she was headstrong,
and would marry whom she pleased; and so she did, though she never got a
stitch of new clothes, nor one thing to keep house with. No; not one
single thing did her father give her when she went away but a hive of
bees. He was right down ugly, and called her Mrs. McMicken whenever he
spoke to her after she was married; but Sally didn't seem to mind it,
and took just as good care of the bees as though they were worth a
thousand dollars. Every day in Winter she used to feed
them--maple-sugar, if she had it; and if she had not, a little Muscovade
in a saucer or some old broken dish.

"But it happened one day that a bee stung her on the hand--the right
one, I think it was--and Sally said right away that it was a bad sign;
and that very night she dreamed that she went out to feed her bees, and
a piece of black crape was tied on the hive. She felt that it was a
token of death, and told her husband so, and she told me and Mrs. Hanks.
No, I won't be sure she told Mrs. Hanks, but Mrs. Hanks got to hear it
some way."

"Well," said Mrs. Hill, wiping the tears away with her apron, "I really
didn't know, till now, that poor Mrs. McMicken was dead."

"O, she is not dead," answered Mrs. Troost, "but as well as she ever
was, only she feels that she is not long for this world." The painful
interest of her story, however, had kept her from work, so the afternoon
passed without her having accomplished much--she never could work when
she went visiting.

Meantime Mrs. Hill had prepared a delightful supper, without seeming to
give herself the least trouble. Peter came precisely at the right
moment, and, as he drew a pail